Top Collaboration Tools for Lockdown

So, we've all pretty much got used to working from home during lockdown. Teams calls, Google Hangouts and Zoom sessions proliferate - and we're starting to be more creative with them too courtesy of custom backgrounds and recording ability. But what next? With the UK lockdown looking likely to continue for some time to come, how can we get even better at connecting and collaborating whilst distanced?

For many, especially those working in globally dispersed teams, this new era of intensified remote working isn't so different from the old 'normal'. Speaking as a perennially flexible worker, with colleagues and clients distributed all over the world and in many time zones, there are some online collaboration tools I simply couldn't do without. So, here is our rundown of the ones we find most useful...

We all take our remote and online email connections for granted these days, and now the ability to meet, online, with colleagues and collaborators is standard. Whether you use Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts, Zoom calls or even Skype, the value of switching your video on is evident to even the most camera-shy. All of these solutions come with chat too so your voice can be heard in more ways than the obvious and conversations are not only available to look back on if you need a reminder of what you discussed - you can also pick up the discussion again long after the meeting has ended. Chat via WhatsApp, Slack or Messenger are alternative options that can enrich the connection between colleagues and most offer integrations with other office and productivity apps.

O365 is great not just for Teams calls and chats, it also offers file sharing and online collaboration via SharePoint and OneDrive. We find setting up individual Teams for different projects, and adding channels for workstreams, is invaluable for organising our files - and our thinking - all in one place. Similar options are available from Google's G-Suite in the form of Google Drive. And both Microsoft and Google have recently added insights tools to help you to understand where, how and with whom you are spending your online productivity time. Speaking of productivity, most office apps support online collaboration so everyone can contribute to the creation of documents, presentations or spreadsheets online.

In times like these, leadership engagement with colleagues is essential. For bigger audiences and more formal content delivery (i.e. a 'one-to-many' engagement), we favour Teams Live Events, which are similar to Teams meetings but with modifications for broadcast (such as producer and presenter roles). Another useful broadcast-type tool comes from LinkedIn Employee Notifications which allows organisations to alert employees once a week to new content shared on their corporate LinkedIn page. Obviously the more personal the engagement the better, so we recommend linking broadcast communications with internal discussion forums and information sharing. Again, Microsoft has it nailed with Yammer, whilst Google now offers a similar solution in the form of Currents.

In the current environment, the intranet sites and portal pages built on platforms such as SharePoint that were often viewed as a 'nice-to-have' suddenly become truly essential reading. Adding blogs, vlogs and regular live sessions to any of these platforms is a real win in a world where the news changes almost by the hour and employees need regular reassurance from the leaders in their organisation to maintain motivation. When talking of the more traditional tools that have served us well in the past, let's not forget good old email: daily email updates have become a lifeline for many. Simple Outlook or Gmail can often do the trick here, but another cloud-based tool we have used with considerable success is Poppulo - a specialist internal comms platform that not only distributes email effectively, its functionality also extends to distributing polls and surveys as well as tracking engagement.

There are hundreds, nay, thousands of productivity apps and tools out there covering anything and everything from note taking, whiteboarding and file sharing to time management and task organisation. Our favourite for keeping meeting notes in one place is Evernote, although if you're wedded to Microsoft, OneNote is also a good solution and has the advantage of being integrated into Teams too. Then we manage team tasks, marketing activities and even our new business pipeline via Trello. Worth noting here that the Trello team does a really nice blog full of productivity hacks, tips and tricks that's worth signing up to. For time keeping whilst social distancing, Harvest is a nifty and simple app that helps allocate and track time spent against projects, and they also offer a way to forecast and allocate tasks with the Harvest Forecast tool.

I've already mentioned OneDrive and Google Drive for document sharing, and Dropbox is also useful if you have clients or team members working on different corporate platforms. We tend to use Dropbox if we need to share large files, but Hightail is a great file transfer service worth having in your back pocket as well.

Last but certainly not least, keeping track of employee motivation during the pandemic is vital for monitoring levels of connection and participation - as well as mental health. We're big fans of Microsoft Forms for running regular pulse or employee engagement surveys and, again, most office suites offer something similar. Online surveys can be a little formal, so don't forget the value of simply checking in with a one-to-one WhatsApp or chat on a regular basis. Even cracking open a beer or sharing a glass of wine over a video chat will keep everyone connected - not to mention sane.

It's worth mentioning that most of the tools we've mentioned here come as part of a suite, whether it's Office 365 or G-Suite: the beauty of which is being able to connect the tools so collaboration can happen all in one place. Publish your pulse survey created by Forms to a Teams channel, re-share a blog post on Yammer or Slack, or add links to your document libraries in OneDrive to your SharePoint portal.

Whatever you are doing and wherever you are working, we're all in this together now.

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